The evidence suggests that medical treatment of breast cancer produces psychosocial trauma in both the patient and her husband due to the loss of the breast and/or physical disfigurement. This study evaluated the effects of a structured couples treatment program on the psychosocial discomfort following a mastectomy. Twenty couples were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions and were administered an assessment battery before and after treatment that measured change in marital happiness, sexual satisfaction, depression, self-esteem, helplessness, anxiety, alienation, and emotional discomfort. An analysis of variance yielded no significant difference between experimental and control conditions on any of the dependent variables. A supplemental analysis of covariance using the pretest as a covariate found that the treatment reduced emotional discomfort in both partners, reduced depression in the patient, and increased sexual satisfaction for both spouses. Recommendations were made for further study of the treatment, controlling for the subject's level of distress prior to treatment.

A federal grant was awarded to provide the Within My Reach healthy relationships curriculum to low-income, at-risk individuals involved with various social service agencies. The effectiveness of this curriculum was evaluated for 202 participants through measures of training and relationship outcomes pre-, immediately post- and 6 months posttraining. Participants experienced high levels of training satisfaction; significant increases in knowledge, communication/conflict resolution skills, and relationship quality; as well as a trend in the reduction of relationship violence. An important implication of this research is that MFTs may broaden their service delivery to at-risk individuals by collaborating with community agencies to adapt established relationship enhancement programs, evidence-based tools, and principles that complement traditional couples therapy.

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This research investigated the occurrence of the self-fulfilling prophecy in sameand mixed-sex dyads. Males and females served as interviewers and interacted with both male and female interviewees. We hypothesized that male interviewers (a) would be more influenced by erroneous preinteraction information about interviewees than females, (b) would show more biased behavior toward their interviewees, and (c) would be more influential at producing behavior in the interviewees that confirmed their expectations. We also anticipated that females as interviewees would be more responsive than males to the interpersonal expectations of their interviewers and thus, females were predicted to show stronger behavioral confirmation. The results demonstrated that expectancy effects operate in both same-and mixed-sex dyads. Support was found for the hypotheses that males would be more biased by their expectations and would produce stronger behavioral confirmation in their interviewees than females. The results also indicated that females as interviewees more readily showed behavioral confirmation than males. The relationship between expectancy effects and interviewees' nonverbal decoding skills was also investigated. Males who were good audio decoders accurately diagnosed more bias in the behavior of their interviewers than males who were poor decoders. A significant relationship between decoding skill and sensitivity to interviewer bias was not found for female interviewees. It is suggested that the findings of this study have implications for understanding sex role stereotypes and sex role behavior.

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